Winches find widespread use in various applications. One important and widespread area of use of winches today is for pulling in lines attached to sails and anchors on sailing vessels and other boats. However, winches find various other applications including use on recreational vehicles and in industrial applications.
Conventional winches typically include a rotating drum that captures the line through friction in a desired direction. The rotating drum is commonly engaged using a manual crank that is attached to a spline and usually a means of gear reduction. More recently, electric and hydraulic power-assisted winches have been utilized to use electric or hydraulic motors instead of a manual crank to input torque to the rotating drum of the winch. These winches are commonly activated using an input control such as a button or switch. In some cases, these winches can be operated in the reverse direction, allowing sails to be trimmed at the push of a button. While the electric and hydraulic assisted winches provide assistance in pulling in and trimming sails without the manual crank used in conventional winches, they still require a user to operate a button or switch to engage the winch. While operation of the button or switch is not difficult, it still requires the user to free a hand from the line being pulled. This can become cumbersome when performing such sailing maneuvers as a tack or jibe where the user would have to switch from a winch on a starboard side of the sailing vessel to a winch on a port side of the sailing vessel or vise versa.
Thus, it would be desirable to operate a winch by pulling on the line in the desired direction without having to operate a manual crank or button. This would provide a more intuitive approach than the winches of prior art, especially during various sailing maneuvers.
Accordingly, it is further desirable to produce a power-assisted winch having a power source which activates when a pulling force is exerted on a line and deactivates when the pulling force is relaxed.